One of the saddest parts of the American Civil War was the fact that ideologies split families apart over issues of state's rights, federalism, and slavery. The Methodist Church had foretold the eventual confrontation in 1844 when they split over the issue of slavery into a Methodist Episcopal Church, South and a Methodist Episcopal Church (the North was implied but never used as they retained a sense they were still the only Methodist Church). In the Terry family of Northwest Arkansas and then Barry County, Missouri, two sons of William and Barbara Ennis Terry, married daughters of a Methodist, and sometimes Cumberland Presbyterian, minister named Joseph Reed.
Martin Terry (his father and family and legal records only used the name Martin, despite attempts to add a Francis Martin Terry as a first name in the late 1990's) married Mary Ann Reed. His brother John Terry married Lucinda King Reed.
Joseph Reed has his eye on the opening lands of western Arkansas (present day Oklahoma and northeast Texas) and after just a few years in Arkansas, he moved his family into the new Republic of Texas. Going with them were family and friends, including John Terry and his wife Lucinda.
Through letters the family kept up on the "connections" - family and close friends as well as newsy information of crop prices, natural events, and social-political themes being talked about.
With the opening of the Civil War, father William Terry had remarked in a letter of the 1850's he did not see the slavery issue being laid to rest without violence, and he was proven right. The Arkansas and now Missouri based Terry's leaned toward the Northern side and the Union and most sons joined to wear the blue. Some, however, selected to wear the gray and all sides paid theultimate price with children, sons, fathers, husbands, friends, and lovers killed.
The last letter between the Missouri family and the Texas family was 1861 with talk of moving to Texas and leaving a struggling farm economy and restless politics. That would not happen.
Gathering together little more than the clothes on their back, some foodstuffs, weapons and other necessary items the family fled 22 July 1861. All around them were approaching armies and if they did not hurry they would be caught in a massive pincher move as Union forces moved south and Confederate forces moved northward. As the saying goes in war, the best laid plans fall apart with the first shot fired and so, as the family fled, they had to scurry here and there as one force moved one way and then retreated and crisscrossed their enemy. The echo of cannon, the black smoke of fires, and the distant volleys of rifles could be heard as they tried to find respite from the conflict. September they reached the shores of the Missouri River in Casconde County, Missouri and sheltered in a rough abandoned farmhouse. There the family took ill from low typhus; as hundreds of men, horses, dead bodies, and other waste drained into the rivers and water ways the water, the land and sometimes the very air was fouled.
In a letter to her sister, the first in nearly seven years, she shared all they had endured. Hard feelings and hardheaded men had not been willing to resume the communications once treasured so dear but the women decided enough was enough and resumed the letters, setting the healing into motion.
In a letter dated 11 September 1867 from Mary Ann Reed Terry in Gadfly (Corsicana), Missouri to her sister Lucinda King Reed Terry in Red River Co., Texas, Mary Ann Terry wrote:
"William and Henderson died in a ... old house on a pile of straw."
The entire family came down sick and Mary Ann Reed Terry lost the sight in her right eye.
After a time they went to Rolla, Missouri and then to Illinois and then back to Rolla.
Summer of 1863 saw them back in Green County, Missouri, as Mary wrote "a wreck".
Finally in 1866 they returned home and all was a waste land. A huge curving swath had been carved out of Barry County Missouri in the war as both armies played a vicious tug-of-war. The entire area is much featured in the multi-volume set The War of the Rebellion as armies, want, and marauding bushwhackers all played havoc on the region. Huge miles of land and forest had been burned down to keep an opposing force from foraging and in the process family homes and farms were destroyed.
Their son John King Terry was part of the Union forces, often under a Capt. Kelso, who chased those bushwhackers. His own wife and in-laws had taken to caves and cabins in high isolated areas to avoid the devastation.
Martin Terry had been living and working a railroad land section and since it was all destroyed , and they had just been renting it, they decided to purchase a railroad claim and begin the task of improving it and starting over.
Marilyn A. Hudson
[Source for the historic letters were originally Ruth Terry Preston and Nell Wray of Texas (descendants of John and Lucinda Terry) and Harriet Wray of Pratt, Kansas, and Dennis R. Terry, Wellington, Kansas. These in turn led to Jed D. Terry collecting and publishing a vast collection of letters written by the family and its various lines from the 1840's to the 1890's in a two volume collection called The Terry Family Letters, available at various research libraries, check WorldCat. In addition, Ruth Terry Preston had given me permission to print and use the letters as well in sharing the history and story of the Terry family. They were donated to a Texas University for their northern Texas archives.]
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